It’s never too early for a child to be inculcated with Jewish pride. This board book will be enjoyed both by parents (or grandparents) and the children sitting on their laps both because of the caricatures of famous Jews and the rhyming couplets with which they are described. [Donald H. Harrison]
Ever Met a Famous Jew? / This Book Tells of Quite a Few! Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish History
Who isn’t seduced by a great storyteller? That enveloping sensation of being caught up in the creative, vibrant snare of a gifted word weaver transforms each of us into wide-eyed innocents, eager to share in the spinning of a yarn. Few raconteurs are as talented as the folks at Write Out Loud. [Eva Trieger]
‘Write Out Loud’ Brings Joy of Storytime to Children and Adults Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eva Trieger, Lifestyles, San Diego County, Theatre, Film & Broadcast
Angela Cohan wrote Persian Delicacies: Jewish Foods for Special Occasions to explore what food has meant to her family and to her heritage. “Food is nourishment. Food is medicine. Food is love,” she writes in the preface to the cookbook. What ensues is a vibrant collection of recipes that have fed her family in Southern California and in Iran prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979. [Danielle Levsky]
More Background on Foods Would Have Enhanced ‘Persian Delicacies’ Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Travel and Food
Journalist, scholar and author M. Y. Berdichevsky (1865 – 1921) wrote for two different audiences. For the intelligentsia he wrote in Hebrew and German; for unsophisticated Eastern European Jews, he chose Yiddish, the language of the shtetl, small towns comprised mostly of Jews. Raised in Medzhibozh, western Ukraine, by his Hasidic father, the town’s rabbi, he spent his youth immersed in Judaism, but also began reading books produced in the Haskalah, Jewish Enlightenment, whose goals included preservation of Jewish heritage, revival of Hebrew, and integrating Jews into the ambient secular culture. [Fred R. Reiss, Ed.D]
Berdichevsky’s Yiddish Stories Collected and Retold in English Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, International
By Rabbi Dr. Israel Drazin BOCA RATON, Florida — Rabbi Dr. Dan Ornstein has written the easy-to-read “Cain v. Abel: A Jewish Courtroom Drama,” an interesting, thoughtful, eye-opening, and thought-provoking book based on the two-dozen biblical sentences in Genesis 4 that report the fraternal murder of Abel by his brother Cain. Rabbi Ornstein includes the
The Cain v. Abel Trial Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Israel Drazin-Rabbi Dr., Jewish Religion
“Postmistress” is a euphemism for “messenger,” which was the role that Nanée, an American heiress, played while in Paris, prior to the German invasion. Initially, she and her compatriots focused on getting well-known artists and intellectuals — many but not all of them Jewish — out of Nazi Germany and into safety in France. [Donald H. Harrison]
Love, Loyalty, and Suspense in World War II France Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison
Comic-Con@Home once again took place online this past summer due to Covid fears. However, Comic-Con also hosted a live convention in San Diego this year, perplexingly on Thanksgiving weekend. So, I took my tryptophan-laden self, picked up my recently Black Friday bruised wallet, and headed downtown to see an all new and all different Con, one from 30 years ago. [Shor M. Masori]
Comic-Con on the Come-Up Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Lifestyles, Music, Dance, and Visual Arts, San Diego County, Shor M. Masori
Rabbis sometimes invent short stories or elaborate on Jewish folktales to amplify the readings in Jewish Scriptures. Such a tale is known as a midrash. With Comic-Con in town November 26-28 and my grandson Shor in attendance, I learned that comic book writers also engage in a bit of midrashim. [Donald H. Harrison]
A Midrash on Samson at Comic-Con Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Jewish Religion, Shor M. Masori
This is a painful book to read, dealing as it does in the mentally abusive treatment author Portnoy said she suffered at the hands of her parents, brother, boyfriend, and college administrators both in the United States and Israel. There seemed no end to Portnoy’s complaints. [Donald H. Harrison]
Memoir Tells of Climb from Abuse and Low Self-Esteem Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, Lifestyles
French journalist Anne Sinclair confesses she had long felt guilty about not asking her late paternal grandfather Léonce Schwartz to tell her about his internment at a little-known concentration camp on the outskirts of Paris. Known by the French as the Royallieu-Compiegne Concentration Camp, and by the Nazi Germans as Frontstalag 122, it was not as well-known as Drancy, the notorious French transit point to the Nazi killing camps in Poland. However, the prisoners there were treated just as callously. Starvation, lice, frostbite were common ailments purposely neglected by the Nazis in their effort to humiliate and winnow the French Jewish population [Donald H. Harrison]
Journalist Documents Little Known Concentration Camp Near Paris Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison, International, Jewish History
Iranian-born San Diegan Ari Honarvar has written a novel juxtaposing the gentle mysticism of the Sufi sect of Islam with life under the strict fundamentalist interpretation of Islam in modern-day Revolutionary Iran. [Donald H. Harrison]
Novel of Iran Juxtaposes Ancient Love with Modern-Day Hate Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Donald H. Harrison
Yalom’s goal was “to understand the effects of…wartime experience on children living in Europe and the United States.” Her six friends provided intimate vignettes of terror, trauma, aerial bombing, bomb shelters, and hunger. They endured and became accomplished, but not unscarred, They are likely “the last individuals who can remember World War II” and they will soon “vanish.” She explored the concept of witnesses in her 2015 work, Compelled to Witness, Women Memoirs of the French Revolution. [Oliver Pollak
After-Effects of Children Witnessing War Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Oliver PollakAbel is dead, killed by his brother Cain, who confesses to God soon after the murder (Gen. 4:1-16). The proximate cause, God accepting Abel’s sacrifice, but rejecting Cain’s. Yet are these sixteen lines of biblical text the whole story? [Fred Reiss, Ed.D]
Rabbi Puts Cain on Trial for Slaying Abel Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Fred Reiss, EdD, Jewish Religion
The 14th season of Jewish Poets—Jewish Voices launched last Monday evening with an outstanding program that attracted 70 attendees on Zoom. It opened with poetry read by local psychologist and poet, Richard Alan Schere. A sample of his offerings, Echo, can be read below. It is a poem that should be on the desks of all politicians as they contemplate their actions regarding climate change. Other Schere poems showed a lighter side with a fine-tuned sense of humor. Schere has made recordings and his work is in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. We were fortunate to have such an accomplished poet open our series. [Eileen Wingard]
One Poet Mourns Earth; Others Sing Songs of Immigration Read More »
Books, Poetry & Short Stories, Eileen Wingard, San Diego County